Turning Down A Referral

Nobody likes to talk about it.

But it does happen.

It happened a week ago, and I'm just now posting about it, because, well frankly, I just wanted to avoid talking about it for a while. 

The shared list comes out once a month and people act like lunatics with anticipation...hoping they get THE CALL...the call from their agency saying they have a match. 

The shared list for August came out on Monday, one week ago. And I didn't get a call, I got an email...and my email wouldn't open. Shane and I were out of town for a ministry conference and I had a gut feeling I needed to bring our laptop with us. Well, fantastic, but out email wouldn't open for us so I was emailing and texting my agency worker and his email was messed up too. So I was frustrated and went to bed. 

I laid in the hotel room and didn't sleep. It reminded me of something that I didn't want to even think about. Before I received my referral for Lily, I received another referral and we had to turn it down. I didn't sleep that night either and I was doing the "should we, shouldn't we" thing. Before Lily, we had been given a referral of a baby, which was not written into our home study, nor did we want to start over with a baby, not to mention she would have needed surgery immediately upon coming home to the States. It was a horrible experience and I begged God to not ever put me through that again. 

And here I was with a gut feeling I was about to go through this again. The next day Shane and I were in the church conference when his Ipad notified him of an email...my agency worker's email finally came through. Shane opened it and there staring back at me was a little girl who looked like Lily. The tears started and I didn't want to read her file, because I knew. I just wanted to look at the pictures. I left the meeting and sat in the foyer and read her file. What's odd is, when I read her name I knew she wasn't the one. I don't know why. Sounds crazy, I know. I knew after reading her file 5 times that this would not work. She doesn't even really have a diagnoses...just a label they slapped on her. She can't walk, can't sit up without tipping over, and needs help sometimes with feeding herself, and she's almost 5. But they haven't done a CT scan of her brain or anything. It's not labeled cerebral palsy or anything, it's just delays. Her medical file just has way too many unknowns.

What I don't understand is that I am logged in to China's system. When you are logged in, you can request a child with milder special needs...this little girl is clearly a special focus child...there isn't even enough medical info on her to help someone make an educated decision.

So I had to say no. 

And it hurt. 

And I fell in love with that face.

So now I have to wait until next month for a referral. When I initially asked how long it would take for her referral the answer I received back was, "just a few weeks." That was way more than a few weeks ago, and now will be longer.

I know that our little girl will be worth the wait.

But oh, how I hate waiting. 

Waiting - not my greatest strength. 

So, once again, I'm trusting in God's timing, trusting in Him. 

He's the one who ultimately does the matching anyway. 

1 Peter 5:7 Cast all your care upon Him because He cares for you.